


Work of the Wasteland

by Dusty_Forgotten



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Birthday, Courier is Lone Wanderer, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-14 02:00:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2173809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dusty_Forgotten/pseuds/Dusty_Forgotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Happy twenty-third, Six.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Work of the Wasteland

Her legs dangle from the rock face over the Northern Passage, and she kicks idly. She swigs from her Nuka and Rum, and focuses on the blinding lights of Vegas with a slow sigh. She’s twenty-three today. That’s four years since she left the Vault, three since Project Purity, and just a few months since Victor dragged her out of that grave. Rex yawns. He’s a lot more easy-going now that his brain isn’t hurting him. Dogmeat was getting arthritis, anyway, wasn’t much use for Wasteland-trekking anymore. Rex would be living a lot longer, and that little piece of Dogmeat living with him.

She’s got to sweep past the Thorn on her way back, drop off those mantis eggs, maybe lighten her pack at the pawn shop, grab Arcade before she goes down to the Tops for drinks. Formality really, drinking and gambling. She’s never been one for the vice, for the lights. No, she thinks, they look much prettier from here. She’s a thing of the Wastes, after all, feels more at home in Freeside than the Strip.

Freeside’s dangerous, and she loves that, loves having to look over her shoulder. She never wants to feel like she’s back in Vault 101 again- the Overseer’s unwaveringly loyal security force stamping out all the excitement to be had. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t like House- he rules the Strip like the Overseer. In the Wastes, she worries about things like, oh, dying on a daily basis, or the alternative, making it to old age, (she doesn’t know which is worse; they’re both coming too fast,) but she’s free. Any day, she could drop this whole Courier business, pick a direction and just walk. You can’t get that in a vault.

Everyone calls her Courier Six, but it’s just a job. Vegas is lovely, but someday, she’ll go home. D.C. Megaton. Build up that irradiated shithole- _her_ little irradiated shithole, just a marker on a map, just someplace to blow through. She’ll blow through the Mojave, one day.

But not today. She’s still got to meet Caesar, and blast the NCR for trying to turn her Wasteland into some Pre-War capitalist political machine, and she’s got to get out of here, because the electricity buzz is killing her. No, she’ll get out of here soon.

But fuck it. It’s her birthday, and she’s alone in the mountains with a bottle of Nuka and Rum, just twenty-three. It’s just her, and her dog, and the Wasteland, and for tonight, she can forget all about the worst job she ever took, and be the Lone Wanderer again.


End file.
